The Democratic race

His to lose

Barack Obama is now the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination

ON SATURDAY February 9th an overflowing crowd of Virginians got a chance to see the Democratic presidential candidates giving duelling speeches at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond. More interesting than anything the candidates said, however, was the detritus afterwards. The crowds stripped the place clean of Obama signs, tearing every last one off the walls. Hillary signs were abandoned on chairs and trampled under foot.

Abandoned and trampled upon: that has been the story of Mrs Clinton's week. Since her successes on Super Tuesday, Barack Obama has won eight primaries and caucuses by wide—sometimes astonishing—margins. He won the Washington state caucus by 37 points. In Garfield County 100% of voters plumped for him. He won Maine by 19 points, Louisiana by 21 and Nebraska by 36.

The so-called Potomac primary completed his winning streak: he won Virginia by 29 points, Maryland by 23 points, and the District of Columbia by the minor matter of 51 points. He has now won 22 of the 35 races, beating Mrs Clinton in the last eight. In the delegate count estimated by CNN he leads by around 120 if you count only pledged delegates and over 40 if you include “superdelegates” (bigwigs with ex officio vote at the convention). He is ahead of Mrs Clinton for the first time in national polls.

The Clinton machine has done its best to minimise Mr Obama's victories. He can only win in caucus states, the argument goes; or only in small states; or among young voters; or in states with large black populations. Mr Obama has crushed all these claims. Maine and Washington are white states with older than average voters. Virginia and Maryland both hold primaries. Virginia is exactly the sort of big Southern state that the Democrats would dearly love to win in November (it voted for George Bush in 2000 and 2004).

Mr Obama has not only solidified his hold over his core constituents—blacks, the young, independents and educated white liberals. He has driven a truck into Mrs Clinton's coalition. In Virginia he won 52% of the white vote to Mrs Clinton's 47%, 54% of the (admittedly small) Latino vote to Mrs Clinton's 46%, 55% of people 65 and over to Mrs Clinton's 45%. He won every income group handily.

Mrs Clinton's decision to campaign in Texas rather than Wisconsin after her defeats shows how defensive she has become. Wisconsin (which holds its primary on February 19th) is full of the sort of white working-class voters who ought to be solid Clinton supporters—and who handed the state to her husband twice in the 1990s.

The Billary campaign is in turmoil. Over the weekend Mrs Clinton fired her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, and replaced her with Maggie Williams, her former chief of staff. On Tuesday night her deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry, also resigned. This housecleaning was a bid to shore up support among panicky donors and superdelegates. But it also reflects a troubled organisation. Mrs Clinton's campaign has been riven by faction-fights between the “white boys” who are close to her husband and “the Hillary girls” who are close to her. It has also been hobbled by the reluctance of her advisers to bring the boss bad news. Mrs Solis Doyle's departure was reportedly precipitated by her failure to tell Mrs Clinton that her campaign was running out of money. Mrs Clinton, it seems, had to lend the campaign $5m of her own cash.

This turmoil is significant for more than the obvious reason that it is dangerous to switch key staff in the middle of a campaign. It suggests that Mrs Clinton underestimated the challenge posed by Mr Obama. She expected everything to be wrapped up by Super Tuesday, and is now putting together her campaign on the fly. It also undermines her claim to be a CEO-type figure who will be ready to run the country on day one. Mr Obama has run a steadier campaign. He has consistently out-organised and out-planned his rival.

Can the Clinton machine recover? Mrs Clinton has three things on her side. The first is her “firewall”—the states of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. At least one in three of Democratic voters in Texas will be Latino, a group that has favoured Mrs Clinton in the past. Mrs Clinton is ahead in the polls in Ohio, a classic blue-collar state, by almost 20 points. These two vote on March 4th. Much of Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22nd, is also Clinton-friendly, and the popular governor, Ed Rendell, is working hard on her behalf. Between them, the three states choose 492 delegates.

The second is time. Mr Obama's message of “change” and “hope” is becoming a little tiresome. As he becomes the front-runner, media scrutiny is bound to intensify. And Mrs Clinton will take every opportunity, not least in two forthcoming debates, to attack him on substance, particularly about national security and the economy. Is Mr Obama tough enough to stand up to John McCain on security (security-minded voters tend to favour Mrs Clinton by a wide margin)? Is he experienced enough to save the economy from free-fall? Her quip on Tuesday night—that Mr Obama is “all hat and no cattle”—will provide the subtext of everything she says.

Her third advantage is the peculiar arithmetic of the delegate race. Even if Mr Obama wins every contest from now on by a five-point margin he will not gain the magic number of pledged delegates needed to secure the nomination. The Clintons are lobbying the superdelegates furiously. They are even prepared to push hard to seat the “ghost delegates” from Florida and Michigan in the convention. These are delegates elected in those states in primaries held in defiance of party rules (and hence not recognised by the party). Mr Obama's name did not appear on Michigan's ballot.

For the New York senator, everything has to go as right in the next three weeks as it has gone wrong in the past three. Her survival depends not just on winning all three big states but on winning them convincingly. But some Texan delegates are chosen in caucuses, forums which have proved friendly to Mr Obama in the past, and Texan Latinos will not necessarily behave like their Californian cousins (who voted for her). Ohio has a lot in common with Missouri, which Mr Obama won. Mr Obama's chances in Pennsylvania will be boosted by Philadelphia, which has a large black population, and Pittsburgh, where John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are powerful forces. If Mr Obama can prevent Mrs Clinton from winning the triple, then no amount of arm-twisting of superdelegates will save her campaign.